Anne Hegerty "The Governess" from ITV's The Chase.
Interviewed by Duncan Lindsay of Metro.
Anne Hegerty,
she is the second best female quizzer on the planet. However when she isn’t
bursting out laughing at silly answers, terrifying the whole of Australia and
mucking around on Radio 1’s Innuendo Bingo, Anne Hegerty is best known as the
queen of ITV’s teatime hit The Chase.
Question: Who would your ideal team
of celebrities be to face on the show?
Answer: It’s
no fun if they’re idiots. I’d like a team of really smart people. Say Stephen
Fry, John Sessions, Sandi Toksvig and Dara O Briain. Smart and funny is what I
like.
Question: Are you allowed to appear
on other shows such as QI and Have I Got News For You and is it something you’d
fancy?
Answer: I
think it’s only that we’re not allowed to appear as Chasers … or, more broadly,
we shouldn’t be quiz contestants, say on Mastermind. Panel shows aren’t a
problem. Paul’s been on the longlist for QI for quite some time. Nobody’s asked
me. Although a journalist told me that Sandi has spoken well of me, so who
knows?
Question: What do you think of Sandi
as Stephen Fry’s QI replacement?
Answer: I
wish her all the best – I think she’s a great talent, but she does have some
very big shoes to fill.
Question: Speaking of which, could
anyone ever fill Bradley Walsh’s shoes on The Chase? Or would the show be
effectively finished if he left?
Answer: I
am terrified of Brad leaving! I once said to him, apropos of his workload, ‘My
great fear is that you’re going to have a heart attack.’ He said, ‘Oh, but I
love it.’ I can’t imagine anyone else being able to do the ordinary-bloke
schtick as well as he does, and the way he can go riffing off a daft fact that
someone’s just come up with.
Anne on This Morning , Tuesday 6th of October 2015.
Question: Who is the most
interesting or exciting of the celebrities you face in the upcoming episodes?
Answer: I’m
not sure how much I can give away, given that the audience is not supposed to
know which Chaser is playing till they come out. In terms of celebs throughout
the upcoming series, there is, shall we say, a VERY big name from the year
1966. Oh, and I now have Rick Wakeman’s email address!
One celeb I
play gives such a spectacularly wrong answer which knocks him out that we
wondered if he had another engagement and did it deliberately!
Question: Intriguing! So did he
leave straight away without seeing how the rest of the team got on?
Answer: Apparently
he did. But he won’t actually have thrown it, of course, because he was playing
for charity and he’s a good guy. Let’s just say that of the three answers,
it was obviously the comedy answer, and the entire audience was amazed when he
picked it.
Question: What have been your best
and worst moments filming the celebrity editions over the years?
Answer: The
people you think are going to be humourless are often surprisingly nice: Ann
Widdecombe was delightful after the show. We’re always a bit disappointed when
people don’t stay after the show and socialise in the green room, though we
understand they sometimes have other things to do.
I was, as
everyone could tell, delighted to be playing David Haye, though I’m not sure he
felt the same way! I can’t recall any really bad moments, though there’s always
that little frisson when I’m standing at the top of the steps and I’m like
‘What if I forget my line? I know I can retake it, but there’s a live audience
who are going to see me screw up.’
I do remember
being pretty worried in the Christmas special a couple of years ago: Shaun was
dressed as a reindeer, and while he was very funny, he was getting VERY
overheated in that costume. People were running around afterwards with towels
full of ice. We were all quite concerned.
Question: And will there be a
Christmas special this year?
Answer: There
is a Text Santa special, and it’s been filmed, and I can’t tell you any more.
Except that there is a heavily wool-related theme.
The newest edition to The Chase team, Jenny 'The Vixen' Ryan.
Question: How is the new Chaser,
Jenny Ryan, fitting in?
Answer: You’d
think she’d been doing it for years. She’s so composed during the final chase,
and being young she’s really fast. The network told us nearly three years
ago that they wanted a young, female Chaser, and that’s a demographic in which
it’s extremely hard to find quizzers. I always knew that we couldn’t have found
anyone better than Jenny for that role, and I’m glad the producers agreed with
me!
Question: People were worried she
might have been a replacement for someone. Is everyone sticking around and can
you envisage a time you would ever want to leave the show?
Answer: Oh,
we’re absolutely all sticking around. We’re doing 190 episodes next year, and
it’s going to be all hands to the pump. As for me, I would love to be a Chaser
as long as they’re happy to have me. I’ve never had so much fun at work!
Question: Tell us a secret about
each Chaser that we might not have known before…
Answer: Shaun
is the most hygienic of us: I’ve never met a man who showers so much! Mark’s
not actually Welsh – he lived in Wales for a long time and so qualifies for the
national team, but he was born and raised in England. Jenny plays the
ukulele.
Paul and I turn
out to have a mutual friend – a young doctor he worked with in East Anglia
years ago is my mum’s godson and is also the Bolton Wanderers club doctor who
saved the life of Fabrice Muamba.
Anne trying to keep a straight face.
Question: Err…that just blew our
minds!
Answer: It’s
bonkers, isn’t it? His name’s Jon Tobin. His mum and my mum were so close that
she was named as one of my guardians in my mum’s will if she’d died before we
grew up. Apparently we were both at one of Paul’s gigs in autumn 2010, in
a tiny room where there were only about 20 people, but we didn’t recognise each
other!
Question: Finally – snog, marry,
avoid: Mark Labbett, Paul Sinha and Shaun Wallace?
Answer: Aaaaargh
… um, snog Shaun ’cause he’s the prettiest of us, marry Paul ’cause he’s so
nice, Mark has to be the other one because he’s already married and I don’t do
married men!
Question: When we interviewed Paul,
he chose to marry you and snog Shaun too…
Answer: Poor
Mark! I probably spend more time with him than with any of the other Chasers,
actually, as we very often have dinner together or spend hours on the phone
setting the world to rights when we’re working.
The Chase
Celebrity Specials return on Saturday 24th October at 7pm on ITV.
